


they know you walk like a God (they can't believe I made you weak)

by Ripley7



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/F, Post-Break Up, celebrities AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 17:26:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6204250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ripley7/pseuds/Ripley7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It didn’t work out,” is what you tell Raven, three months after, unable to keep standing the pitying looks she sends you when she thinks you can’t feel the weight of her gaze on you. There is no dignity anymore in your stubborn silence and the hoarseness of your voice just makes you cringe, almost enough to wish you could swallow back that mockery of a confession. You know you look a fright, you can barely remember to shower on a regular basis, let alone remind yourself to wear anything else but the clothes she left behind. </p><p>(or seven months after #ClexaBreakUp trends online, Lexa leaves Clarke a drunken voicemail.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	they know you walk like a God (they can't believe I made you weak)

**Author's Note:**

> unbetaed as usual, tags will be updated as the story progresses

“It didn’t work out,” is what you tell Raven, three months _after_ , unable to keep standing the pitying looks she sends you when she thinks you can’t feel the weight of her gaze on you. There is no dignity anymore in your stubborn silence and the hoarseness of your voice just makes you cringe, almost enough to wish you could swallow back that mockery of a confession. You know you look a fright, you can barely remember to shower on a regular basis, let alone remind yourself to wear anything else but the clothes she left behind. They don’t smell like her anymore and yet, you still find yourself brushing the tip of your nose against the collar, hoping for a hint of her fabric softener, desperate for a quick fix to fight against the withdrawal of your addiction, hating the unfamiliar looseness of your body, that sluggish cage ensnaring your struggling heart but with the days growing into weeks, into months, the comfortable weight of your favorite borrowed sweater settles uneasily on your frame, a constant reminder of everything that went _wrong._    

“I miss her,” is all you can say to Bellamy, when you’ve had a drink too many and the liquor doesn’t numb you anymore and turns you from party animal Griffin into a sad, sad shell of a human being, one that can cradle her phone between her hands, as if it were the most precious thing in the universe, looking up the contact information staring back at her, heartbreak seeping through the down turn of her mouth, worrying the scabs all over again. It’s been six weeks ( _only six weeks and you have the rest of your life in front of you to miss her_ ) and oh god, what are you supposed to do with that hole in your chest where she used to be. Bellamy’s fingertips slide gently over the cup of your hands, covering up the screen for an instant, forcing you to blink out the image of her proud back as she walked away from you, and treacherous tears spill over, the last unwritten words of a tale of a betrayal you still can’t swallow down. “I know” is all he says, is all he can say before letting his fingers hover over yours over the ‘delete’ option. Together, you press down. 

To Octavia, you don’t say anything at all, just let yourself choke out a trembling “O.”, her only warning before you fall in the embrace she offers you, clinging to her back like a lifeline and she holds you through the storm, one hand fisted almost painfully in your hair, taunt muscles against your liquid frame in the furor she still arbors against Lexa’s desertion and the subsequent wreckage she left in her wake. (It’s easy to forget she lost her too, if not for that clench in her jaw when she sees your puffy eyes or feels your whole body shake in surrender, but she keeps you still, and _whole_. And if your fingertips dig a little harder into her skin, she doesn’t breathe a word of protest, and you wonder for the first time about how lucky you are to know the fierceness of her love.)

To the media, you say nothing at all. You stay tight lipped despite the paparazzis hounding you and circling you like vultures, walk out of many interviews when her name barely breaches the reporter’s lips until she becomes one of your ghosts, clinging to the sheets, that otherwordly murmur following you around, nothing more than background noise in the circus that becomes your life.

For your fans, you leave Kane with only a brief PR statement. You don’t have anything left to give and they _know_ , for most of them grieve right along with you. Some are so _deep_ in denial, it’s hard to watch their hopeful messages pop up unexpectedly on your twitter feed, but you’ve been there, and if you’re being honest with yourself, a small part of you is right along with them, letting itself carry along for the ride, incensed by the thumping beat of your foolish heart. 

For her? You scrub yourself raw, suffer through the never ending echo of your own voice, rising and breaking all over again, pick at the strings of your old guitar until you can’t close your fists anymore without a pinprick of hurt coursing through your hands. The result? Twenty five minutes. Twelve songs. A whole album.

( _ **May We Meet Again**_ becomes platinum in fifteen hours and haunts you at every turn, until you force yourself to relearn how to fill your life with static, unwilling to hear gushing praises about your heart left bleeding for the whole world to see, nor the sympathetic sigh that eventually follows, leaving you hoarding sorrow close to your chest, the last vestige of an _almost,_ of a _could have been, should have been, never was, never will_.)

Day after day, the shaking foundations on which you are building yourself anew crumble down, leaving you a blank page, a canvas left untouched, unsullied, untainted, if not for her phantom touch, that smear of fingers against your cheek, a burning brand you cannot wash away no matter how hard you try.

And then, when it gets finally easier to breathe, when you stop freezing at the first glance of dark curly hair, of forest green eyes, Lexa waltzes back into your life. 

 

* * *

 

 

To be fair, it’s not much of a voicemail. 

Two minutes of static silence, a choked out “Clarke…” as if Lexa was tasting air for the first time in weeks, in months, and then a whispered “I miss you.”, the twist of the knife, before the dull click resonates. Still your ears ring all the same, the phone tips in your shaking hands and fall to the ground. The numbness starts in your stomach and spreads so quickly, you find yourself slipping on the floor too, hunched over, trying to catch your breath. Your hands feel cold when they curl over your knees and you force yourself to focus on that, not on the roar of your heart beating anew, not on the sluggish way your brain is analyzing every single word, despite your best intentions. But it’s not enough, and you scoot backwards, on your ass, until your back hits the island in the kitchen, your head thumps back and you close your eyes.

“Clarke, I miss you.” replays over and over in your head, like a scratched record. Nausea rolls and you breathe through clenched teeth, anger too slow to come for your taste. Instead, you’re flayed by her very breathing, labored as if she had been crying, and the slight slur of her usually impeccable delivery. Knees pressed against your chest, you ground the palms of your hands against your eyes until the only thing you can see when you blink are the stars and not the flash of Lexa’s back when she walked away from you. You barely feel the tears rolling on your cheeks, only tasting the salt of them, licking off your wounds. You let your gaze wander to the phone, face down against the wooden floor and you hope against all odds that you broke the screen when you dropped it, as your socked foot breaches the space and rests on it so you can slide it towards you. 

When you pick it back up, no such luck. With a tired sigh, you finally hang up,  get back up, leave it on the island to pour yourself a drink, leaving the bottle of whiskey right besides your glass, and take a sit on the stool. You push your phone with your fingertips, as if willing a notification to pop again, an explanation, an apology, anything to move forward from that voicemail, but your phone stays desperately silent and you hate yourself a little bit for the tremble in your hands and how desire still sits deep in your throat as you swallow. You want to know what prompted the breach of the silence, why tonight of all nights, why after so long, why now that you’re slowly picking up the pieces of your broken heart. You stare and stare until the shake in your hands subside and it’s only then that you pick up your glass, swallow half of it in one mouthful. You put it back before taking a deep breath and pick up your phone instead, waking it up for its sleep mode and unlocking it.

You check your recent phone calls and blink at the number. So she didn’t change her phone number either, and you wonder if it’s for the same reason she didn’t or if it was merely for practicality. Resentment churns when you think of the (many) unanswered messages you left her, months ago, before dignity caught up with you, and how she deliberately chose to ignore you. Before you can talk yourself out of it, you tap the info bubble and decide to send her a text message, knowing that you’re a bit too raw to call her back, and all too afraid that she wouldn’t pick up.

You work different phrasings, go through many emotions, typing and deleting so many times that an half hour goes by without you even noticing.

What you settle with is this :

_we are flash floods, you & i, arriving fortuitously, soaking each other down to the bone. like fossil fuel, we keep ourselves alive only by burning._

Then you swallow down the rest of your whiskey, push yourself off and leave everything in the kitchen, your feet dragging you tiredly towards the bedroom. You know sleep won’t come easily but taking the phone with you will only make it worse. You can check in the morning if she replied.

 

* * *

 

As expected, it takes you quite some time to fall asleep and your night leaves you even more exhausted. Your heart is in your throat when you think of the phone and the possible message waiting for you, but you still take a slight detour by the bathroom, take a shower long enough to take out the last kinks out of your back. When you trail back to the open floor, and go directly to the island, you don’t even have it in yourself to pretend anymore and you check if she replied anything.

She did. Twice.

Surprise and hope twist dangerously in your chest but you open up the first text message anyway.

_the contrails of our desire is the purest proof that belonging exists in human form. we are children of the wild. see these bones light as air._

And then, separate, and you can’t tell if it’s because she judged it important, worth mentioning by itself or because she changed her mind after sending the first but…

_kiss me & i melt._

A shuddering breath and you find yourself spilling open, foolishness warming up your whole being. Unwilling to touch with a ten foot pole as to why, you prepare yourself breakfast before even considering answering, weighting out carefully your options.

Four words, a surrender to clever tricks, the tumble down the rabbit hole.

_i miss you too._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr @ lieutenantripley


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